Savvy Affiliate

The Blog Herald recently put up a quite solid post about Passwords

I thought that some of the most interesting facts in it are that

1. Studies suggest that over 40% of all passwords are quickly guessable by computer programs
2. 1% of passwords contained the word “password”
3. 17% of passwords are 6 characters or less.   ( Which given 26 letters, 10 numbers, case insensitive is only ~ 2 * 10^9 combinations.   Still a lot in computer terms, but it is getting less and less)

All those facts makes me think of this Myspace Girl who had her house trashed by someone who threw a “Lets trash this house party”

Although I believe that she planned the party and then made up a story about her myspace password being stolen to try to stay out of trouble, judging from the above statistics is it perfectly possible that the made her password “password1″ and did indeed have it stolen.

What’s the moral of this story?   No moral really, just a friendly reminder that you might not be quite as secure as you think you are.  After all, they make you change your passwords every now and then at work for a reason….   At least they do at my work.